Newb Scrabble Bezzy’s Will Obvs Say Thanx For Lotsa Ridic New Word Additions To Dench Game

For those of you who are Scrabble mad prepare to be horrified at the new words added to the official Scrabble word list.

And for you newbs who may be attracted to the game now that it’s getting cooler, take my advice – make sure you memorise all these new ‘z’ words.

Collin’s , which publishes the list of all words that can be used in Scrabble, has added 6,500 to the existing line up of 250,000.

This time it’s made up of words used on social media, texts and on the street as well as techie terms.

Making their debut in the list are lolz (laughs) and bezzy (best friend), which are joined by tweep (person who uses Twitter) and tuneage (music).
Others reflect modern society, trends and events, such as devo (devolution, as in devo-max), vape (to puff an e-cigarette), onesie (all-in-one suit) and twerking (hip-gyrating dance).

The new word list also recognises the role technology plays in daily life with the inclusion of facetime, hashtag and sexting.

Scrabble opponents are also now able to challenge each other with exclamations such as augh, blech, eew, grr and yeesh.

For the most competitive Scrabblers, the highest-scoring new words may be the most important. These include quinzhee (an Inuit snow shelter – 29 points) and checkbox (28).

“Dictionaries have always included formal and informal English, but it used to be hard to find printed evidence of the use of slang words,” said Helen Newstead, head of language content at Collins.

“Now people use slang in social media posts, tweets, blogs, comments and text messages.”

The board game was invented in 1933 by American architect Alfred Mosher Butts. It was originally known as Lexiko and then Criss Cross Words. Scrabble as we know it was born in 1948.

The game has reached a new band of modern players, with digital versions available online and as downloadable apps.

New Words Include:

1. Bezzy
Best friend

2. Cakeages
Charges in a restaurant for serving cake brought in from outside

3. Cakehole
Mouth

4. Dench
Excellent

5. Devo
Short for devolution

6. Geocache
Search for hidden containers using GPS as a recreational activity